Julius Peppers was Saquon Barkley’s “Welcome to the NFL”
CHARLOTTE — Saquon Barkley has made a name for himself by being bigger, faster, and stronger than almost everyone else on the football field. He’s a physical beast that helped run the Eagles to a Super Bowl win. His 2024 season came the closest of anyone in 40 years to Eric Dickerson’s rushing record and finished the regular season with 2,005 rushing yards, earning Barkley NFL Offensive Player of the Year honors last season.
While Barkley has found success with the Eagles, he’s always been on the league’s best. Drafted by the Giants in 2018, he was also NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year that season.
There’s something else from that year that Barley remembers just as well though. It was in Week 5, against the Carolina Panthers.
While recently appearing on an episode of “Hot One’s,” the popular YouTube show where celebrities take part in a probing interview with increasingly insightful questions from the host Sean Evans while eating wings with increasingly hotter sauces—because apparently that sounds like a good time—Barkley was asked when he realized the “sheer strength and power difference going from college to the NFL?”
Barkley immediately was able to identify that Week 5 game of his rookie year, and the first pepper that really knocked him out.
“Yea, I’ll tell you the story,” Barkley began. ” Julius Peppers , obviously unbelievable talent, my rookie year, we had a play and I broke it outside and kind of got blown dead and there was a flag on it. And he had me right here by my shoulder pads. And I was like, he’s trying me. So I went like this, I tried to hit his arm down. And it didn’t move. And I tried to hit it again and it didn’t move. And I was like come on bro, let me go.”
